Last year, Ben and I figured out that we’d been to California almost every year since we’d been married.  So when his business trip to Portland came up, we figured we’d extend that tradition to “the west coast” instead of just California :-)

The plan was to fly out Wednesday evening, he’d have his meeting Thursday morning, we’d explore downtown a little bit that afternoon – and of course visit Voodoo Donut!  Friday, we were going to take Catherine to the Portland Children’s Museum and hopefully meet up with some friends, then head home first thing Saturday and make it home in time to watch the ACC Championship game!

However, it seems the Lord had completely different plans.  We haven’t seen rain in ages and the day we were flying out, there were some crazy storms that even brought some tornadoes.  We boarded and the rain subsided but we didn’t take off for another hour or more because the storms were affecting Atlanta also.  I was hoping our flight to Portland would also be delayed because of all of this but when we landed, it was showing it was still on time.

(PS – all of these are iPhone photos…
I brought a DSLR with me for Portland but since we never left an airport, I never pulled it out!)

Catherine did surprisingly well hanging out in our laps on the plane for almost 2 hours!

This was during the midst of the storm and then once we were airborne.

We booked it over to the gate where our flight to Portland was departing from and it was actually delayed!!  But, the doors were closed and there was no gate agent to answer any questions.  There were about 10+ people hoping to make it on the flight and when we finally found someone to help us, he was a ground crew member who went to get some answers for us.  But he came back to say they’d already closed the doors and were finalizing the passenger manifest and trying to depart.  So all of us stood there and watched the plane take off…. *sigh*

And to make it all even worse, we got notification on the Delta app that our suitcase had made it onto the plane while we were stuck inside the terminal.  When does that ever happen?!?!

So, after waiting for another age or two, we talked to Delta and figured out there was no way we’d be able to make it out for Ben’s meetings the next morning and decided to just come back home.

We grabbed some dinner at a sit down restaurant in ATL and then went to wait at our gate, where Catherine ran around with her 3rd wind (it was after 10:30pm at this point!).  When we boarded the plane to come back to Greenville, she was still wide awake and climbing all over us.  Not until maybe 5 minutes before landing did she fall asleep!

And what I’d hoped would be our “we made it to Portland!” photo turned out to be our “we’re back home and exhausted but safe” photo :-)  Catherine woke up as we got off the plane and went to figure out when we’d get our luggage back.  We got another notification yesterday that it was put on a plane back to Atlanta and then again when it was heading back to Greenville.  So hopefully it will be delivered today!

Our biggest concern was that Catherine’s sleep sack (that’s she’s slept in since we stopped swaddling her!) was in that suitcase along with her sound machine… but clearly she was too tired to even notice :-)

We don’t know the full reason God didn’t want us on the west coast this week, but yesterday, Ben was able to work from home so we still were able to have a full day with him!  And we’re getting to do some things at home this weekend that we would have missed otherwise.  So, we’re thankful for that too!

Happy weekend!!